| The first component of the mentioned terminology combination, bone comes from the Old English bãn – bone, which in turn goes back to the Old High German bein - bone. In the Merriam Webster's Dictionary, bone is defined as 1) one of the hard parts of the skeleton of a vertegrate - one of the hard parts of the skeleton of the spine; 2) the more enduring parts of a dead body, mortal remains - more durable parts of a dead body, remains. |
The second component of the term combination yard goes back to the Old English geard-fenced place, yard, which, in turn, came from the Latin hortus-kitchen garden. The main meanings of the common-literary word yard are the following: 1) a small usually walled and often paved vacant area poen to the sky and adjacent to a building; 2) an enclosure for poultry or livestock. In English slang, the lexical combination bone yard is used in the metaphorical meaning of a cemetery (a fenced place for remains). |
